As promised, and in chunks, here is a sampling of pictures from my recent trip.
After 18 hours of travel, we landed at Kilimanjaro Airport Saturday evening, were met by our guide, and drove an hour to Arusha to spend the night.
Ours was a small group tour offered by a travel company we’ve used many times. Although the group was advertised as taking as many as 22 people, it turned out tourism has not fully returned and there were only eight of us (four people plus a guide/driver in each of two vehicles). All good people!
Tanzania was formed fairly recently — in 1964 when the former country of Tanganyika (freed after 75+ years of German and British colonial rule) and the Republic of Zanzibar merged. It’s a bit of an uneasy alliance. The population of Tanganyika is roughly 63 million, mostly Christian now, though made up of 125 different tribes with different languages and cultures. The population of Zanzibar (an archipelago) is only 2 million, and mostly Muslim.
Our first stop the following morning was Tarangire National Park, 1000 square miles of protected area for wildlife. It’s home to between 2500 – 3000 elephants and we saw many, many of them. Most traveled in matriarch-led families. (Males tend to travel solo.) The elephant population is growing and we saw many elephant babies!
We also saw a VERY unusual site, according to our guide, Adam — an elephant with twin babies. The last time Adam saw twins was in the 1990s. He told us it’s believed to be a sign that there will be plenty of rain in the upcoming rainy season. Apparently elephants have a sense of this and understand that they can risk having twins because both are likely to survive.
We spent 2.5 days in the park, staying at a Treetops camp where we went to sleep hearing lions roaring in the distance. And we spotted many other animals:
Next stop: Lake Manyara National Park
Interested in more photos from Tanzania?
Toby A. Smith 